[Quqnoos] Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said he opposes talks between Kabul government and the Taliban
| Well, sure. The Taliban belong to Pakistan and the ISI, they don't get to negotiate with with outsiders, especially when the outsiders are trying to run what Pakistan considers its private backyard. |
"Militants just want to destabilize the system," Gilani told reporters at a lunch in Washington on Monday.
| Which system might that be, pray tell? |
President Hamid Karzai has campaigned for inviting Taliban leaders to negotiations to broker an end to an almost nine-year conflict.
Gilani's government itself negotiated cease-fires or peace deals with the Pakistani branch of the Taliban in 2008 and 2009, pacts that later fell apart.
Still, Gilani said, socio-economic investments to address the root causes of the insurgency are as essential as military action. Militant violence and suicide bombings have spurred the "flight of capital and there is no investment in Pakistan," he said, calling for international capital to return.
| That was certainly a change of subject. I think I have whiplash. |
Gilani is attending President Barack Obama's two-day nuclear security summit that brought leaders and senior representatives from 47 nations to Washington.
| And very interesting it is, too, to see which countries sent only senior representatives instead of leaders. |
The Pakistani leader said he told Obama that the "biggest mistake of the US" after its military campaign that ousted the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001 was to leave "a vacuum" that allowed militants to return. |